Numlock News: January 28, 2026 • Great Mongolian Road, Deep Ice Seismometer, Stratospheric Internet

Jan 28, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Innovation

One part of the economy that just won’t quit is the thriving sector of financial institutions offering liquidity options to legally innovative firms through cutting-edge technical flow management. Critics call this “crypto money laundering.” Whatever you call it, business is great: according to Chainalysis, crypto money laundering rose from $10 billion in activity in 2020 to $82 billion in 2025. Of that, $16.1 billion was in Chinese-language networks, which grew 7,325 times faster than legal centralized exchanges since 2020, and processed $44 million in illicit payments per day last year.

Sage D. Young, Sherwood News

Road Trip

A new study published in the Journal of Historical Geography documents the Great Mongolian Road, which was a major east-west caravan route through inner Asia. The study drew upon maps produced by the Japanese Imperial Army from 1873 to 1945, which in turn were compiled from Chinese imperial records from 1890 and Russian surveys conducted in 1884. While the maps didn’t match the territory perfectly, they do corroborate early accounts of the Great Mongolian Road collected in the early 20th century. They also confirm the existence of 50 nodes such as water sources, settlements, monasteries and landmarks, spaced at 24-kilometer intervals along the 1,215 kilometer route.

Sandee Oster, Phys.org

Golden

It has been six months since KPop Demon Hunters first entered the Top Movie Songs chart, and still the animated musical is dominating the top ten, with HUNTR/X’s “Golden” still No. 1 as of December after earning 95.5 million official U.S. streams and selling 19,000 downloads. In total, seven of the songs from the movie are on the chart, with “Soda Pop” coming in at No. 2 with 41.2 million streams and 5,000 downloads, and “How It’s Done,” “Your Idol,” “What It Sounds Like,” “Take Down” and “Free” making the list. The other songs in the top 10 are the title song from Wicked: For Good, the Shakira song from Zootopia and “Come On Up to the House” by Tom Waits from Wake Up Dead Man.

Kevin Rutherford, Billboard

Piggyback

The U.S. Geological Survey’s $1 million Deep Ice Seismometer project is attempting to put two seismometers at the bottom of two 2.5-kilometer deep holes in the ice of the South Pole. The water above is slowly freezing and will trap them far beneath the ice in the quietest place on Earth, where the noise from ocean waves, weather and traffic won’t get picked up. As a result, the seismometers will be able to pick up any earthquake on the planet above magnitude 5, and they just got their first hit off a 6.1 near Okinawa. The project was possible by piggybacking off of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which strung sensors long 86 boreholes and was planning a $37 million upgrade in 2020 when geophysicists asked if they could also drop something in the holes too. The machines must remain upright even as the ice freezes above them, and any more than three degrees of rotation renders them broken forever. One tilted 1.6 degrees but got nudged back in a stroke of luck. They should be fully frozen within the month.

Hannah Richter, Science

EVs

A new study out of the University of Michigan assessed the lifetime ownership costs of used vehicles bought in year three and driven until year 10, including insurance costs, repairs, maintenance and the value retained on the vehicle between purchase and sale. Overall, in the mid-sized SUV category, used electric vehicles offered a savings of $13,000 over a new version of that SUV with an internal combustion engine. Compared to a used version of the car with an internal combustion engine, a used vehicle offered lifetime savings of $10,000. The data was drawn from virtual vehicle models, monthly gas prices, electricity prices and Craigslist data of 260,000 listings of automobiles.

Matt Davenport, University of Michigan

Bears

In 1942, the 27,000-year-old remains of a 15-year-old boy were found in Arene Candide Cave in Italy. A new analysis of the remains of Il Principe confirms early suspicions that his death was the result of an animal attack. The cold case investigation determined that the perp was probably a bear, given the bite and claw marks, according to the study published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences.

Sarah Novak, Scientific American

Stratospheric

There are still 2.2 billion people with limited or no access to the internet, often because they live in remote places. While satellite-based internet is increasingly available, it’s also often too expensive for parts of the developing world. Stratospheric internet, where the equipment is suspended from rigid airships or balloons, is still on the table in many places, even though large players like Alphabet have killed their projects in the area. The economics of high-altitude platform stations (HAPS) are pretty intriguing, given that it’s a lot cheaper to get a balloon 12 miles high than it is to get one to low-Earth orbit. World Mobile, a London-based telecom, is looking into high-altitude hydrogen-powered UAVs, planning a flight test of an antenna capable of delivering 200 megabits per second covering an area of more than 500 cell towers. If successful, it could supply 5.5 million Scots with high-speed internet for 40 million pounds per year, or about 60 pence (80 cents) per person per month.

Tereza Pultarova, MIT Technology Review

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